Commonwealth Bank certainly held the title of ‘Scrooge’ prior to Christmas last year, when they announced a new $3 fee for customers to withdraw their own cash.
It was met with swift and loud public backlash, including from the FSU. We wrote to CBA, briefed media, called for a meeting with the Federal Treasurer and Financial Services Minister, and expressed members’ outrage at this greedy grab for cash.
Within 24 hours, CBA said they would “pause” the fee for six months while they spoke to affected customers.
In response to CBA’s backdown, one FSU member said, “I’d like to say thank you for that letter – as frontline staff, we are getting abuse from customers […] The big bosses aren’t the ones who take calls for eight hours, it’s the frontline staff who have to deal with the changes they make.”
Another FSU member said, “Great job, FSU. Staff are already getting verbally abused each and every day, and yet we remain dedicated. Why? Because we actually care about our clients and take care of our own staff.”
However, a six-month ‘pause’ is not good enough. We’re continuing to push for CBA to scrap this outrageous fee entirely.
Australians have 9.48 billion reasons to be cynical of this fee announcement, which is all about increasing the bank’s profit beyond the $9.48 billion they made last financial year.
Not only are we concerned about the impact the fee will have on service standards, including branch closures, we are also concerned that our frontline members will be forced to cop the brunt of angry customers.
Prior to CBA’s disastrous announcement, Bendigo Bank quietly announced its own cash withdrawal fee – $2.50 each time customers need to access their own money.
FSU National Secretary Julia Angrisano said both cases demonstrate why it’s critical the Federal Government implement the recommendations of the banking report and finally start holding the banks to account.
“The reason the Commonwealth Bank felt it could introduce a $3 fee for some customers and the Bendigo Bank a $2.50 fee is because there’s no regulation to stop them,” she said.
“Transaction fees, combined with branch closures and the removal of ATMs, are all designed to reduce the costs on banks, not to benefit customers.
“Banks want customers to access low cost methods of transaction and they don’t care that not all of their customers want to. Banks deny, or charge extra, for choice solely to boost their own profit.”
There have been some promising announcements by the Federal Government recently to introduce a cash mandate and impose a levy on banks that fail to meet minimum levels of service in regional communities. However, more needs to be done to hold banks to account when it comes to blatantly ripping off customers in the name of maximising profits.
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